June, 2006

>The show tonight at the Black Cat was absolutely PACKED… was a weird one though… the crowd were sooooooo loud… didn’t matter too much for us but I went out to see some of Juanas set and decided to watch it from the side of the stage because I could hardly hear her (decently) out front… each city has its own vibe when it comes to this I guess… I just find it unpleasant for the performer…. and to top it off the monitor guy couldn’t have been less motivated… even though my monitors were alright I know some of the other members in Psapp had a hard time – especially Gwen…. and Juanas monitors were so bad that she had to cut some of her songs short because she couldn’t hear the loops… I know the feeling all too well…. playing to loops you can barely hear whilst standing in front of an audience who are watching your every move is nothing less than awful…. Jose told me that is wasn’t too bad for him but the crowd were still very loud…. we also had some weird vibes with a few of the people who worked there… maybe they were just having a bad day, who knows… but it just kinda took the magic out of the day….

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>Once we had packed up all our gear at the XM Satellite Radio session we drove over to the Black Cat… It was cool to be back here… I had played at the old Black Cat with Bow Wow Wow in 1997 (if I recall correctly) – apparently it moved locations around four years ago so it was cool to check out the new spot… it was a really nice venue and still had a similar vibe… anyway we had to load in as soon as we were allowed in, set up and soundcheck as the crew from Pancake Mountain were coming down shortly after…. I had never even heard of Pancake Mountain up until Galia told me we were doing this performance a few weeks ago… I think a friend of hers told her about it and when she saw it she said we just HAD to do it… when you see the production it’s pretty obvious why! When we were done soundchecking the crew were already setting up and shortly after all the kids were let in…. they all came up on stage and we played ‘Hi’ and ‘The Words’ with all the kids and a few parents dancing about… the whole thing was a little surreal to be honest but we all really enjoyed doing it and all the people involved were very nice…

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>I was so wrecked this morning when Debs woke me up to do this session… I was still up at 4-am hanging upside down out of my bunk with Juana… thats how we stretch our backs on the bus…. anyway, couldn’t get to sleep after that for ages… when it came to get up this morning I was pretty out of it… but alas I was not the only one…. Gal and especially Carim surpassed me by far I can safely say 🙂 at first we were told it was going to be a full band radio session and then just before we left we were told that it was going to be an acoustic session for time reasons… then when we got in there it turns out that they wanted us to do a full set which we can only do with a full band… so looks like A LOT of people were out of it this morning lol! But we are all used to that by now I think lol… so instead of doing a set as they had hoped for we did ‘Tricycle’, ‘Needle & Thread’ and added ‘Everybody Wants To Be A Cat’… … … the building that XM is in and all of its studios and facilities were unbelievable… I have never seen anything like it before! Once we were all miked up and ready to go it took us quite a few takes of each song before we had something we were happy with… it was just too early in the morning and no-ones brain was functioning properly… but everyone there seemed happy enough with what we delivered so I guess (or at least hope) that it wasn’t too bad :o/ Gal and I made sure we got some good swag though…. as always! On the way we did a special photo-shoot which will be featured on here next! An interesting little bit of trivia we were told was that this building used to be a printing press and the first issue of National Geographic was printed there… nice….

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>First thing I did when I woke up this morning in Manhattan was take a walk up to Houston to Yoshi Sushi for lunch… I had been looking forward to this for days as this is my favorite sushi bar in New York (so far)… I had the ‘super chef deluxe’ and it was everything I expected it to be 😀I still had some time to kill before load-in so I just took a nice ‘n easy walk back down through the lower east side… there are some cool stores there…. when we got into the venue it was absolutely roasting… and it took about an hour before someone came who had the authority to switch on the air-conditioning… we were all dripping by the time we had set up our gear so most of us just went back onto the bus to cool off thanks to the AC in there…. just as we went out though there was a massive thunderstorm that continued for quite some time… apparently this is quite a strange occurrence for NYC… that information didn’t make it any more exciting at the time I have to say :oPEven though the show was sold out there weren’t too many people there when we got on stage… and I would say 30% of the audience were record company or related… but we still had a laugh… and the monitors were really loud which I love! After we were done I checked out Juanas set which sounded amazing and Juana really went for it tonight… I love her show… but it was a hard crowd… they just kinda stood there and stared at us all as if we were some strange species at the zoo… I guess some of them were just too cool to show that they were into it… but that is to be expected in a major city like this… all the people that worked there were really cool… especially the sound chicks & dudes and Cameron the mad security guy…. look forward to seeing them all again on Monday!

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>I have not been sleeping very well for the past few nights… sleeping on a tour bus every night whilst driving to the next city is alright for a while but after some time I find I don’t get enough deep sleep… just thought everyone should know that… anyway, Debs our tour-manager woke me up at 10 as we had a radio session to do before the show… all I knew beforehand was that it was a college radio-station… to my amazement it was was at MIT – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – pretty cool! We did our session for WMBR… played ‘Tricycle’ and ‘Needle and Thread’ as we always do… after that we were allowed to rummage through their t-shirt collection and I must have taken about 7 – result – I can’t help it… I just love free stuff LOL! Once we were done there we got a cab back to the venue… quite a special one this time… the Museum of Fine Arts.… our equipment had already been loaded in when we got there and I had some time to kill before soundchecking…. so I took myself off for a little wander around the different galleries… some great stuff there… my personal highlights were pieces by Miro, Pollock and Picasso… so amazing to see originals of their artwork! When it came round to soundchecking we had next to zero time to do it properly…. kinda sucked a little but I didn’t let it get to me… it wasn’t that bad anyway… we played a fun show… a lot of times with a seated show like this I find it can be hard to have any kind of rapport with the audience… it works well for classical music no doubt… but not necessarily for the kind of music we play… you want people bobbing back and forth to the groove, youknowwhadimean?! What was really strange was that we were packed up and out of the building before 11pm… thats a definite first I think! Most of us didn’t even know what to do with ourselves with an ‘entire’ night on our hands LOL!

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>The first thing most of us did when we hit Montreal was go to the launderette… it was about time too… the tour has been so full on so far that we wouldn’t have been able to wash our clothes even if we had wanted to (and trust me I wanted to!!!)… it is hard to put into words just how exciting a launderette can be when you are on the road and you are about to run out of clothes on a hot sweaty summers day… I think you get my drift… once I was done it was already time to load in… the venue we were to perform at was beautiful… apparently it was the first cinema in Montreal… after sound-checking I went to the nearest Thai and had the dish I always have – Pad Thai – I am so predictable when it comes to Thai food… just ask Carim :oP The show was great… unfortunately I couldn’t see the audience due to the combination of spotlights and my sunglasses… so it was hard to vibe with them… Juana did a brilliant show… her sound was the best I have heard all tour… it was weird to hear her speaking French all of a sudden though… couldn’t understand a word…. didn’t get to see much of Joses show as I had to fit a shower in before bus call… Carim and I went and grabbed some food before leaving… was pretty strange… my sandwich was ok I guess but Carim ordered a burger and it came covered in gravy and there were about 12 peas and 1 stuffed olive on top…. (and someone actually got paid to make that???)… was a laugh though anyway…. the waiter kept asking us all these questions about London as he is thinking of moving there… was entertaining to say the least……

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>I didn’t get up until 2pm today just as we arrived in Toronto… we had to load in straight away as we were running late… we were playing in a church today which was a nice change of stage scenery… the crew were helpful but one of the people ‘in charge’ was kinda rude… won’t go into any detail but I guess it had to happen sooner or later… we’ve had so many nice people on this tour, it was about time for there to be someone who thought they were the most important thing since sliced bread… the whole thing did put somewhat of a damper on the show and to top it off we had to cut 2 songs from our usual set because we were ‘running over’… whatever…. Juana and Jose sounded great in the church… the acoustics were perfect for their setup… after the show I went for a walk around the local area just to get some movement and fresh air…. stumbled across a really sweet bookstore that sold new & used books… couldn’t believe they were still open… was sooooooooooo nice to just hang out and browse… they had a very good selection too… right, on the bus writing my blog now and we will be off to Montreal in about an hour…….